Our usability test results distilled

[Elena O'Malley]

<musing>
It's been said before, in many different ways, but part of 
usability is saying what something does for the user, rather 
than what it is. We need to do both.

A thesaurus (or www.oingo.com) is a good check for how people may
interpret library terminology. Try..."reference" or "research" or
"resource" 
or even "services" ... people don't always necessarily understand what
that 
means in a _library_ context. For ways library resources have been
described
on websites, take a look at this web4lib message: 
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive/0008/0026.html

As Michael pointed out, it's helpful to provide context and relate
known words to unknown words. There's lots of types of "databases"
and "catalogs" (course catalogs, J.Crew, book). If you use the
label "databases" (for whatever reasons),  perhaps put a bit of text 
under it or near it on the order of "search for journal, news, and
magazine 
articles" -- or whatever it is that the databases do.

Accessibility issues aside, you can put that info in a title tag, 
alt tag (if it's an image), rollover, javascript mouseover, or a text tag 
right next to the "databases" link or elsewhere on the page. 

Users don't seem to mind redundant links and information. If you 
only have one resource and you put eighty links to it on the 
homepage, people might well find that irritating. However, think of
it as adding multiple subject headings or increasing the number of 
access points in a MARC record. You want users to be able to
find the book, but you're not sure how they're going to look for it.
We also use synonyms and analogies to explain concepts when 
we interact with users in person. Try to increase their odds of finding
and choosing appropriate tools by describing those tools in multiple ways. 
Just as we tell our users that one book may not solve all their research 
needs, the one "perfect" set of labels might not exist.
</musing>

Elena O'Malley, Technology Librarian
Emmanuel College, Cardinal Cushing Library
400 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115
omalleye at emmanuel.edu